From: ***@aol.com
To:
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Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 5:06 PM
Subject: The Passion

Just a note to say how disappointed I am that you are showing this movie. I expect better from you. ***

My Reply

***,

I'm not sure if you are disappointed with us for showing The Passion of the Christ for religious, moral or capitalistic reasons.

The flip answer is we don't make 'em, we just show 'em.

What we show here isn't a reflection on our religious beliefs or our sexual persuasion or our ideas about good and evil. We have shown films about gay men, Jewish families, war mongers, gimpy grandmas, dogs, women from Lap Land, single mothers, divorced people, the occasional straight person and Heaven forbid, birds.

Our mission is to bring films of interest to Sonoma County. The fact that over 5,000 people have paid to see this film at our theatre tells me that someone is interested. That said, I will tell you that my business partner and I have no intention of seeing this film. We aren't interested in its story or portrayal of violence.

When we booked this film we focused on these issues, it's an independent film distributed by a small independent distributor with whom we do business. Newmarket Films has distributed well loved titles like Monster, Real Women Have Curves and Whale Rider. Obviously their decision to distribute Mel Gibson's film had as much to do with their beliefs as it does with ours. It is in a foreign language.

Our only regret about booking the film was that opened wider than we expected. When we booked the film it was going to be a run of about 1,000 prints which is on the top end of what we handle. The release ended up being over 4,000 prints and played in over 1/3 of the cinemas in the United States. That is a release on the scale of a Star Wars, Spider Man or Matrix. I'm just relieved that we made money on it as it did push back some other releases.

We are a business. Businesses exist to make money. If you are going to be disappointed in us, then please be disappointed in us for the right reasons: We are unabashed, money grubbing, Capitalists.

Hopefully you fill find it in your heart to forgive us our sins and join us when we show other films like:...